Sugar cane billet planters are relatively new mechanical developments and have become popular in planting sugar cane billets. One planter enjoying customer acceptance is the planter disclosed in Australian Patent Specification No. 52,354 entitled SUGAR CANE PLANTING. A modification of this particular planter has been developed and is disclosed in Australian Patent Application No. 487,810.
The planters disclosed in the above-identified patent specification and application are commonly called Populin planters. They are subject to improvement. One such improvement relates to the elevator used on the Populin planters. The Populin elevator carries cane billets in lateral flights which extend between a pair of chains. Each flight may grasp more than one billet and, to ensure even planting, an elaborate mechanism has been incorporated to return any excess billets in each flight to the supplying hopper. This mechanism is unnecessary with an improved design.
A further improvement relates to the elevators. Each elevator in the Populin planter requires two chains for each flight. This unnecessarily increases maintenance and initial machinery costs.